Najib apologises, but will Anwar forgive?

Some believe clemency may boost support for govt but public anger over 1MDB remains

- Shannon Teoh

KUALA LUMPUR - On the night of May 9, 2018, Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim had just watched election night unfold in Malaysia's first-ever change of government in hospital, where he was recovering from shoulder surgery, when he received a call. The caller was ousted premier Najib Razak, the first Umno president in six decades of Malaysia's history to lose power.

"I went through hell, and it was Najib who orchestrated (my imprisonment)," Mr Anwar said a week later in an interview with The Straits Times two days after he was pardoned of a controversial sodomy conviction on May 16, 2018.

But Mr Anwar, who was then serving a five-year jail sentence, was civil during that call with a "completely shattered" Najib and advised him "as a friend," he said.

The advice? "Prepare a good defence."

If not a good one, Najib's "defence" has certainly been a long one, both in and out of court. Since the multibillion-dollar 1MDB scandal blew up in 2015, it took Najib three years of persecuting opponents, a watershed election defeat, another four years of lengthy court battles in no small part caused by delay tactics from his legal team and 26 months in jail before he finally apologized on Oct 24, 2024.

After nearly a decade of protesting his innocence, the disgraced former prime minister - whose original jail term of 12 years was shortened to six years in January - now still maintains that he was deceived by fugitive financier Low Taek Jho and Low's accomplices at PetroSaudi. (Najib may be the first-ever scam victim to have suffered becoming a billionaire.)

On Oct 24, Najib apologized "unreservedly to the Malaysian people," declaring in a statement read out by his son that "it pains me every day to know that the 1MDB debacle happened under my watch as minister of finance and prime minister".